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CHI98LA289 · Piper PA-28-140

2 Aug 1998 · LAPORTE, IN, United States

Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach

From PPO to PPO

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Event

NTSB case
CHI98LA289
Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
Accident
InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
Completed
API-reported fatalities
0 · all aircraft and ground
Ground fatalities
0
OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
General aviation
WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
Visual Meteorological Cond

Piper PA-28-140

Aircraft type
Piper PA-28
Category
Airplane
RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
N8398R
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From PPOTo PPO
Aircraft age
Not recorded
Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
Part 91: General Aviation
Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
Approach · VFR go-around
First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
In flight collision with object
DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
Substantial

Cause areas

  • Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The student pilot said the airplane drifted beyond the runway's edge due to a sudden gust of wind from the airplane's right side. The airplane's left main landing gear collided with a runway marking sign shortly after the pilot applied full power for a go around. The landing gear separated from the wing's main spar attach point and fell to the earth. The pilot flew the airplane for about 1-hour after the accident returning to the airport and landing on the same runway he had departed.

Probable cause

was the student pilot s inadequate compensation for the wind conditions he encountered during the landing phase. A factor in this accident was the pilot s lack of total experience.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CHI98LA289
Event ID
20001211X10790
Case number
CHI98LA289
Dataset
historical-pre2008
Source SHA-256
89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
  • Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
  • Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
  • The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: 28650860057b6deaa768babb8f7fd383220810885af93543b00e0b7f3444800d; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:15:56.468Z.